Just Because We’re Scared Doesn’t Mean We’re Wrong*

When language fails me I look around.
Has language failed you too?
I am a seaworthy underwriter
chauffeuring the limousine malware.
You’re not supposed to put new wine
in old bottles but people do it anyway
swelling epochs in shady hunter green,
tragic preoccupations with American actors.
I can still pass as a pretty young thing.
Take my cue when it’s time to butterfly
inside a collapsing salt mine I’m partially
shouldering, shuddering encryptions.
Blink twice if you feel betrayed as I do,
baby it’s whatever I can pull off in a day

*Emmylou Harris

Nikki Wallschlaeger’s work has been featured or is forthcoming in The Brooklyn Rail, LIT, jubilat, Apogee, Georgia Review, Denver Quarterly, Spoon River Review and others. She is the author of the full-length collection Houses (Horseless Press 2015) as well as the graphic chapbook I Hate Telling You How I Really Feel from Bloof Books (2016). Her second full length book of poetry, Crawlspace, is forthcoming from Bloof Books in May 2017. She was also an editor for Bettering American Poetry Anthology 2015, a project promoting the work of marginalized writers. She lives in Wisconsin.